This is a group that came of age during the 25 years of barely interrupted prosperity between November 1982 and December 2007. The individuals in this group matured during America’s “holiday from history” in the 1990s. They have not known the draft, or war on the scale of World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. But September 11 shattered their confidence that America would always be safe. And seven years later the financial crisis shattered their confidence that America would always be rich.
This one-two punch is refashioning American politics in unpredictable ways. What 9/11 did, says Duffy, is “shake the foundation of the sense of security that I grew up with.” For instance, September 11 was a hinge event that motivated 32-year-old Adam Kinzinger, the GOP candidate in Illinois’s 11th Congressional District, to join the Air National Guard and eventually serve in Iraq. But it took another hinge event, the 2008 financial collapse that empowered the Obama agenda, to motivate Kinzinger to run for Congress. His overriding issue is government power. Kinzinger’s opponent, incumbent Democrat Debbie Halvorson, didn’t hold any town halls last August to defend her support for Obamacare. Kinzinger held eight to explain why he was against it.
The ultimate irony is that President Obama, 48, is not only part of the generational turn, he’s accelerating it.
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